Baseball is a national pastime in the United States and in a number of foreign countries including Japan, Mexico, Cuba and the Dominican Republic. Children as young as 3 or 4 years old attempt to swing a bat against a ball or catch a ball. Parents and grandparents and older brothers and sisters attempt to help the child develop skills in hitting and catching a ball. The most common way of providing this help is to provide a T-ball stick disposed in a base member. The stick has at its upper end a cup for receiving and holding a ball. When the ball is disposed in the cup, the child swings a bat against the ball to propel the ball from the tee. To help a child in learning how to catch the ball, the ball is thrown gently by a parent to the child from a relatively short distance. At a more advanced age, the child practices batting by swinging the bat against the ball when the ball is thrown gently toward him from a relatively short distance.
In both hitting and catching, someone closely related to the child (e.g. a parent or grandparent) has to place the ball on the tee or throw the ball gently toward the child. This creates inconveniences, particularly when a young child in the age range of 3 to 6 years old is involved. In addition, the procedure is inefficient since considerable time is lost between the successive times that the ball is thrown gently to the child. This is particularly true when the number of balls used in the batting or catching practice is limited.